How often one wishes to
learn some magic and to be Peter Pan or Harry Potter or
visit Wonderland with Alice! But, then again I often
wonder, would their stories remain the same if I stepped
into their roles? Would I have acted differently? And,
would that have changed the narrative altogether? Then,
what if every one of us wanted to 'be' Harry Potter, in
his or her own separate way? Then what would happen to
the infinity of Harry Potter stories, thus generated? The
result we might expect would be chaos. The actual result,
however, would be something else: it would be a computer
game!

In this paper I would like to propose that the multiple
possibilities of narrative action in children's fiction,
especially fantasies such as Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland or the Harry Potter stories, bring these
stories very close to computer games. I believe that
certain sub-genres of children's fiction work with
premises similar to the computer game as regards
narrative flexibility and other features. A child's dream,
as in Alice or in Hojoborolo, can create an
unreal world full of constant activity as in computer
games. These can be shown as prototypes for computer
games or games in the making. I shall therefore take two
children from fiction to compare the child in literature
with the child in the game: Alice in Through the
Looking Glass and Harry Potter in Harry Potter
and the Sorcerer's Stone (also known as Harry
Potter and the Philosopher's Stone). The chief
reason behind the choice is that they are both popular
and representative of their respective centuries. The
other reason is purely technical: both characters have
been represented in eponymous computer games. I am here
using the American McGee's Alice and Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, both made by
Electronic Arts, as examples of such games. Since I haven't
as yet played the Harry Potter game, I shall use the
Alice game for a first-hand account. I shall however use
screenshots and game reviews to comment about both of
them.

But first let us see how a computer game actually works.
The computer game consists of infinitely branching levels
of narrative. The story changes from player to player. In
fact, the player is both the author of the story as well
as reader. Therefore very often, comparisons have been
made with Jorge Luis Borges's short story The Garden
of the Forked Paths or with hypertext and
interactive fiction.

The game does not follow narrative time: every action in
it happens 'now'. Because of the innumerable
possibilities involved, the game is distanced from
reality. And it often evaluates the player's skill. Let
us then build up a workable definition from these clauses:
The computer game, then, is an activity taking place on
the basis of formally defined rules, containing an
evaluation of the efforts of the player and the story of
which differs from player to player. When playing a game,
the rest of the world is ignored.

The American dramaturgist and computer theorist Brenda
Laurel has extended the idea of stories to interact with
and take part in in a more theoretical way. [1] In this
proposed system, the computer program must take on the
role as author while the game progresses. Any action by
the player must lead to the system adapting the fictive
world. According to the game designer Chris Crawford,
computer games have four basic characteristics (Crawford
1982) [2]:

1. Representation: A game is a closed formal system that
subjectively represents a subset of reality. (By
subjective, Crawford means that a game is not necessarily
trying to represent reality.)

2. Interaction: The game acknowledges and reacts to the
player. (Unlike a puzzle, which simply lies still.)

3. Conflict: A game presupposes a conflict. This can be
either between several players or between the players'
goal and whatever prevents the player from reaching that
goal.

4. Safety. The player is safe (in a literal sense) from
the events in the game. (Gambling presents a special case,
where the outcome of the game is designed to have impact
in the real world.)

To this fourfold definition, I will add a fifth clause:

5. The construction of narrative: as stated before, every
game keeps constructing its own narrative.

We will first look at the inherent game-like structure in
both the stories of Alice and Harry Potter. Then we shall
consider each of the five defining clauses of the formal
computer game and see how applicable they are to the
stories of Alice and Harry, and thereby to some types of
children's fiction.

Before that, however, we could possibly look at a few
other types of literature and see how closely they
resemble the computer game. I have concentrated on
children's fiction set in fantasy environments and not on
'serious' children's fiction. Children like Oliver Twist
or Little Nell are essential part of an emotional and
realistic environment. Hence they have no place in the
computer game. The real world excludes a large number of
choices, which can be made in the fantasy world. As
Humpty Dumpty says to Alice, 'When I use a word, it means
just what I choose it to mean'. You couldn't do that in
the real world, could you? As for emotions, I do not
think any extant computer game can accommodate what E. M.
Forster calls a 'round' character. Instead there is, a
rather flat character whose involvement in the plot is
not emotional, but rather a matter of exploring a world,
solving problems, performing actions, competing against
enemies, and above all dealing with objects in a concrete
environment. This kind of involvement is much closer to
playing a computer game than to living a Victorian novel
or a Shakespearean drama.

Certain other types of narration have often been cited as
being very close to the game-structure, namely science
fiction and the cinema. My argument would be that these
do not show an equal degree of interactivity to the game,
or for that matter the children's fantasy. I shall
elaborate on this later on, when I look at interactivity
separately. Most children's fiction, however, shows a
game-structure to some extent. Let us see how.

Both Alice and Harry are playing games in their
respective stories. Through the Looking Glass
can be looked at as a chess game in progress. Lewis
Carroll himself comments on the playability of his story:
'As the chess-problem, given on the next page, has
puzzled some of my readers, it may be well to explain
that it is correctly worked, so far as the moves are
concerned.' [my italics]

This comment makes the game associations of his book even
more obvious. In fact, both Alice books are based on
games. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland could be
seen as a kind of card game, and we have already spoken
of Through the Looking Glass. Besides the cards
and the chess games, they also contain plenty of
mathematical puzzles and word games. Being awfully bad at
maths, I would not dare bother you with mathematical
problems. Speaking instead of word-games, Humpty Dumpty's
analysis of the Jabberwocky poem is a famous
example:

"To 'gyre' is to go round and
round like a gyroscope. To 'gimble' is to make holes
like a gimlet." "And "the wabe' is the
grass plot round a sundial, I suppose?" said
Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity. "Of
course it is. It's called 'wabe', you know because it
goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it .
. . " "And a long way beyond it on each
side," Alice added. "Exactly so. Well, the
'mimsy' is 'flimsy and miserable' (there's another
portmanteau for you)."

Both Humpty and Alice are playing with
English words and juggling with them to create new ones.
The reading of the Jabberwocky poem is also a
game. Alice uses a mirror to read it and finds a poem,
which resembles English. But there could be plenty of
other ways to look at it. There could also be an utter
failure to make anything out of it. Other than these the
books are replete with all sorts of games: there is
croquet, a caucus-race and a mock-chivalric joust.

Like the many games in the Alice books, Quidditch in
Harry Potter seems to contain many games in one, perhaps
a combination of hang-gliding, hockey, and bungee jumping.
And Harry loves quidditch; there are over three games of
quidditch played in the first book alone. As in Through
the Looking Glass here too there are games of chess,
called wizard chess, being played. Harry's best friend,
Ron Weasley is a past master of this game. In the Harry
Potter stories, games actually play a major part in
problem-solving. In the first book, two of the spells
guarding the philosopher's stone involve game playing.
Harry has to play one of his best games of quidditch to
gain the key to the door. The door itself opens to reveal
another game: this time, a huge set of wizard chess where
the huge pieces actually destroy themselves. To cross the
floor they have to checkmate the white king and conquer
the white army, which guards the passage. ''It's obvious,
isn't it?" says Ron. "We've got to play our way
across the room."

Like all games, the games played in these books have
their objectives. It might be to cross a passage as in
the last example, or to go to a new place as in Through
the Looking Glass, or simply to win house points for
Gryffindor as in Harry's quidditch matches. Similarly,
the story as a whole has its objective: to destroy
Voldemort's evil plans in Harry Potter and for Alice, to
become a queen or simply to go home.

Now it would be instructive to compare this with the
computer game per se. This too has its objective: victory
or the maximum points scored. If the game evaluates the
player, Harry Potter in the story is also being
constantly evaluated and keeps gaining or losing house-points.
The formal set of rules that form the base of the
computer game can be compared to the basic conventions of
the fictional narrative. We said earlier that while
playing a game the rest of the world is ignored. This is
evident both in Alice and in Harry Potter. The definition
we prepared for the computer game is therefore equally
true of these books. What remains now is to consider the
five clauses which were used to evaluate the
effectiveness of the computer game, namely:
representation, interactivity, narrative construction,
conflict and safety.

About the representation of a subset of reality, I do not
have much to say. The Harry Potter story has a quasi-real
environment, which is a 'not-so-well-known part of
England'. But it is there and even has its own ministry -
the ministry of magic. The same goes for Alice.

Interactivity of games and narratives has long been a
controversial topic. Questions of how interactive a game
or a book can be are matters of dispute. But that the
computer game, at least, is to some extent interactive
has been accepted. Once I start a game, I can control the
fate of my narrative. I keep interacting with a set of
rules and thereby make my own changes and augmentations
to a narrative existing only in its shell, as in the base
narrative told at the beginning of games like American
McGee's Alice and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
This interactivity is not present in normal forms of
fiction where there is no possibility of intruding into
the plot. Nor would it be possible in the movie or in
science fiction as much as in children's fiction like
Harry Potter that involves fantasy and a game-structure
as shown earlier. For example Harry Potter has to work
out a riddle for reaching the philosopher's stone. He has
to discover a hidden set of rules by which he changes his
story in his favour.

In other forms of narrative, barring some forms of
science fiction [3], the possibilities of change are far
the lesser. Not so in the Harry Potter stories. Hogwarts
literally keeps changing itself. The staircases keep
moving and changing places. Doors pretend to be walls.
Paintings move from canvas to canvas. On top of
everything, there is Peeves the poltergeist to confuse
you. Similarly, in Wonderland Alice finds no help in the
Cheshire cat when she asks for directions:

"In that direction," the
Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a
Hatter: and in that direction," waving the other
paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like:
they're both mad."

But there are always plenty of
possibilities present: if the staircase had not confused
him, Harry would never have discovered the secret door
guarded by the three-headed dog. The story could then
have been entirely different. Had Alice not played the
chess-game the way she did the story could have taken a
different turn. She could either have won the game in
more than the eleven moves, which make up her story or
she could have lost all her pieces. It is just that both
Harry Potter and Alice have used the numerous choices
available to construct their stories as we read them now.
The errant staircase could have behaved itself in the
Philosopher's Stone and Alice could have proved a less
competent chess-player. For that matter, so could Ron
Weasley. God knows what would have happened then.

I can, however, give you one alternative. For this I must
tell you a story:

The White Rabbit popped up every now and then and told me,
'Don't dawdle Alice. We must be on our way'. And guess
who was my guide! it was the Cheshire cat. And as can be
expected, it ditched me whenever I needed advice and
vanished into thin air. Suddenly two chessmen attacked me:
the knight charged and the castle blocked my way. Luckily,
I found the vorpal sword in time and killed them both.
Now was the time to set out and kill the Jabberwocky. But
I believe, I had been a trifle careless and a red pawn
cut my head off with an axe. And before I had fully
realized what had happened I heard, as I had heard so
many times, the Hatter's insane laugh and once again the
game was over.

This, though I am a rather bad storyteller, is not
entirely my own concoction. Yet in a way, it is. This was
just one outcome of my playing the game called the
American McGee's Alice, which I have already introduced.
The basic plot might belong to the game but the choices
which take it further are mine. And even if I might not
have realized it, I was constructing an entirely new
narrative while playing. Let us now discuss the other
chief clause that we have spoken of: the construction of
the narrative.

In the process let me introduce the basic story of the
two computer games, for those of us who are not already
familiar with them. For this purpose I shall use game
reviews published in popular gaming magazines or web
sites. TechTV, a computer game-oriented web site comments:

The key to this game's success is its
simplicity. You navigate through Harry Potter with
the arrow keys or, occasionally, the mouse. Gameplay
is in the third person and your view is fixed over
Harry's shoulder, his Hogwarts cloak flapping in the
wind behind him. The game begins with a quick voice-over
synopsis of the story's opening events. Gameplay
kicks in after the Sorting Hat places Harry (at his
request) in Gryffindor. Next we meet Albus Dumbledore,
who invites Harry to explore the castle but reminds
him not to be late for class. The game then takes on
a tutorial tone as Harry explores Hogwarts and its
environs and learns how to cast spells and navigate
the puzzles he'll face later. In other words, this
game is about jumping puzzles, timing puzzles, and
exploration - all very simple and not at all
challenging. There is no death here, only the
prospect of Harry fainting and having to restart.
Instead of posing a challenge, Harry Potter offers
variety and charm. It never lets you stay in one
place for long. One minute you're engaged in jumping
puzzles, the next you're levitating giant statuary
onto platforms, and then you're riding a broom . . .

I've already spoken about the Alice game,
but the Electronic Arts Review would perhaps be of some
more help: When Alice answers a distressed summons to
return to Wonderland, she

barely recognizes the befouled
setting. From the fungal rot of the Mushroom Forest
to the infernal chemistry of the Mad Hatter's Domain
and beyond, Wonderland festers to its core. Undaunted
by the diseased ambience, cavernous confusion, and
mortal danger that surround her, Alice must undo the
chaos. Equipped with courage, a keen appetite for the
bizarre, and a lethal array of transmogrified toys,
she'll penetrate the strongholds of her enemies,
confront the forces of evil, and put the wicked Queen
of Hearts in her place.

In this game, of course, one finds the
basic plot of the Alice stories given a different twist.
As far as I have been able to play it, all the characters
from the book are there, but the hints of evilness in the
Queen of Hearts and the madness of the Hatter and the
March Hare have been given a diabolic twist. For regular
gamers this game is scarcely different from the 3-d
shooting games (first-person-shooters) like Doom
or Quake.

Both games involve constant action. The action is
dependent on the player's choice. If the player's
interpretation of the situation differs then he makes
different choices. These choices determine what puzzle he
must solve and in what time sequence. Together with that
there is the constant risk of failure. As in my case,
where the white pawn attacks me from behind. There is
also the chance of getting lost in the game world if one
strays onto the wrong path. This is again reminiscent of
Borges's The Garden of Forked Paths. Borges
makes his character, the famous sinologist Stephen Albert
say, 'time forks perpetually towards innumerable futures'.
The narrative in the game too, forks towards innumerable
futures. In this sense the game has also been compared to
the hypertext.

The hypertext theorist David Bolter claims that when
Wolfgang Iser and Stanley Fish argue that the reader
constitutes the text in the act of reading, they are
describing hypertext. If that is so, then the reader-response
theory can also be applied to the computer game. Of
course, the reader-response theory itself has several
positions within it, so this might prove difficult. We
could possibly apply Fish's theory, that the reader
creates the entire text, to the computer game. Instead of
'creates' perhaps one should say 'recreates' because the
game is not completely free of the base narrative. This
would then bring us to a question of control over the
narrative.

Game design theory talks of controlled access vis-à-vis
random access. Controlled access refers to the series of
choices which govern the game, and random access to the
element of uncertainty plus the base plot of the game. it
is only with a balance of the two that a narrative can be
properly constructed. I would argue that even in the
books, Alice and Harry try to maintain this balance as
they play along their respective game patterns and
construct their stories. Let us take an example from Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Harry has suddenly
been moved from the human world to the wizarding world by
the giant Hagrid. This is an instance of random access.
Whoever knew that the boy from Privet Drive had magical
powers! That he has to go to Hogwarts and join the
sorting ceremony is compulsory. Such events in the book
correspond to the basic rules of the game. But when he
puts on the sorting hat a different thing happens. He
makes a desperate mental effort to exercise his choice
not to join the Slytherins. This is controlled access.
Harry Potter has made a controlled choice. Therefore even
in narrative construction, the book has some similarities
with the games.

The next things to consider would be the penultimate and
ultimate clauses of our comparison: conflict and safety.
Without conflict there cannot be any fun in achieving
your objective. And fun is essential to any game. It is
the reason why we play. This is one area where both the
Harry Potter books and the game are the most similar. In
both of these there is the major conflict with Voldemort
and certain minor conflicts between Draco Malfoy and
Harry, or with the ever-wrathful Snape.

In the American McGee's Alice game, the conflict
is simple: almost every creature in the diabolic
Wonderland is an enemy. The conflict in the Alice books,
however, is more difficult to define. Robert Polhemus in
his essay Play, Nonsense, Games: Comic Diversion
has this to say about the nonsense in Carroll:

But there is an equally strong
hostile impulse in nonsense - the desire to satirize
the senselessness of the world. The Red Queen sums it
up: 'you may call it 'nonsense' if you like . . . but
I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would
be as sensible as a dictionary!' As usual in Carroll,
what at first seems self-enclosed is in another light,
mimetic and referential. The nonsense poem A-sitting
on a gate says in effect that there are things in
Wordsworth's Resolution and Independence just as
absurd as anything the white knight can devise."
The conflict in the Alice books is against society
and a backdrop of nonsense veils it. [4]

Safety in a computer game implies both
the players literal safety from the violence in the game
and the apparent distance from the rest of the world
while playing. In the literal sense, we must admit,
neither Alice nor Harry are safe from the action in their
stories. In fact, Harry comes out of it badly injured
after his encounter with Voldemort. But as far as the
distance from the outside world is concerned, we must
remember that when Harry fights Quirrell, he is
completely alone. As for Alice, she is in a strange world
of dreams and the outside world is far away as long as
she is asleep.

We have seen the intrinsic similarities of these two
books with their counterparts in computer games and with
the structure of computer games, in general. Analysed in
terms of the defining clauses of such games, these books
reveal many similarities. Many of the clauses have been
as easily applied to these books as to games. Like the
player of the computer games, both Harry and Alice create
and simultaneously read their own stories. The story as
we currently have it in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's
Stone and in Through the Looking Glass can
then be seen as one played game among the infinite
playable games possible. Among the latter, even my own
abortive Alice game finds its place.

Here I would like to point out that some children's books
capitalized on their game-like narrative flexibility long
before video games were conceived of. At a recent seminar
on the History of the Book, Dr. Alexis Tadie drew
attention to a parallel story narrated in the marginalia
of a British soldier's copy of Kim [5]. The fact
that the story of Kim can be read also as a Tommy's life-story
is intriguing, indeed. In effect, then, perhaps the
soldier who possessed that copy of Kim was
playing 'the Great Game' mentioned in the novel, in his
own way.

Thus we can see how certain types of children's fiction
can be looked at as proto-computer games. And though
unlike computer games in that they tell just one story at
a time, they are similar because they contain numerous
other potential narratives. I would like to conclude by
saying that the child in the book looks forward to the
child in the game and thereby to an ideal inexhaustible
narrative.

References:
1 Brenda Laurel (ed.): The Art of Human-Computer
Interface Design. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990 pp.135-42
2 Chris Crawford: The Art of Computer Game Design. 1982,
electronic version
3 The concept of Time travel is especially worth
mentioning in this context. The classic example , of
course, is H.G.Wells's The Time Machine
4 Johan Huizinga mentions the Halsrätsel (roughly
translated as 'neck-riddle') as a form of the rather
dangerous medieval 'game'. I believe a comparison with
the Halsrätsel and the Queen of Hearts' frequent "Off
with her head" would be instructive in this context.
5 Dr. Alexis Tadie of the University of Paris mentions
this in his paper at the Book History Seminar, Jadavpur
University, Calcutta.http://www.telegraphindia.com/archive/1020211/the_east.htm